Dr. Angela Belcher ’91 (CCS Creative Studies) ’97 (UCSB Ph.D. Chemistry) featured in UC Santa Barbara Magazine, Fall/Winter 2025

Belcher talks creative studies and challenging cancer detection limitations through reimagined technologies

University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) alumna Dr. Angela Belcher ’91 (CCS Creative Studies) ’97 (UCSB Ph.D. Chemistry) is featured in the Fall/Winter 2025 issue of UC Santa Barbara Magazine, focused on her path and life’s work at the frontiers of cancer detection. Her research reimagines early diagnostic tools by working across biology, materials science, and engineering. 

Dr. Angela Belcher is a renowned innovator and the James Mason Crafts Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She delivered the 2025 CCS alumni commencement address in what she warmly described as a “commencement conversation.” During the ceremony, Dr. Belcher received the Santa Barbara Medal, the university’s highest honor.

In the article, reflecting on her time at CCS, Belcher credits the experience with cultivating her problem-solving mindset and interdisciplinary foundation. “Creative Studies shaped everything about my life," she said. “What I wanted to do was pick and choose topics and put them together in nontraditional ways. I think problems get solved at these interfaces of scientific disciplines.”

“At UCSB, I learned how to push the boundaries,” Belcher continued. “I learned how to be brave enough to say that this is unacceptable. I learned to not accept that something is impossible.”

Today, this alumna is applying this approach to the limitations of ovarian cancer detection, aiming to develop new technologies that can identify the disease before it metastasizes.

Read the full story in the Fall/Winter 2025 issue of UC Santa Barbara Magazine.

Learn more about Dr. Angela Belcher:

Congratulations to the College of Creative Studies (CCS) Class of 2025, June 21, 2025

Meet 2025 CCS Commencement Alumna Speaker Dr. Angela Belcher ’91 (CCS Creative Studies) ’97 (UCSB Ph.D. Chemistry), May 12, 2025

Watch highlights from Dr. Angela Belcher’s CCS 2025 commencement ‘conversation,’ or view it in full.

Dr. Angela M. Belcher ‘91 (CCS Creative Studies) ‘97 (UCSB Ph.D. Chemistry) Awarded National Medal of Science, January 29, 2025

Angela M. Belcher '91 (CCS Creative Studies) '97 (UCSB Ph.D. Chemistry) Elected to National Academy of Sciences in 2022, May 18, 2022

CCS Biology Alumna Heads Biological Engineering at MIT, April 15, 2019